Car of the Week: 1953 Pontiac Chieftain “tin woodie” wagon
A fabulous 1953 Pontiac Chieftain “tin woodie” wagon gets all the love from Wisconsin collector
Rod Carlson really loves old cars, and he’s got a lot of them — more than 50 at last count. Most of them are low-mileage originals, or unusual models that may have been restored, but are authentic and unchanged from the factory.
Carlson hopes someday to open a museum in his hometown of Wausau, Wis., to display all his cars and other car-related collectibles — he has everything from scooters and gas pumps to original dealership neon and old-school roadside restaurant artifacts.
If the museum ever becomes a reality, it’s going to be packed, and one of the cars that will surely be getting the star treatment front and center is Carlson’s sweet 1953 Pontiac Chieftain “tin woodie” wagon. Carlson has cars that are certainly more valuable, and even more rare, than the venerable green wagon, but none that he treasures more.
“I’ve always loved station wagons. I grew up in the back seat, looking out the back window, and my friend’s family had a Chevy like this,” Carlson recalls. “I just liked Pontiacs first and foremost, and the rareness and the oddness of it, you know? There’s a photo I remember from when I was a kid, and I have it sitting in my office, of an old Pontiac tin woodie wagon with a surfboard on top sitting down at a beach in Cocoa Beach, Fla. And always I looked at that on a regular basis and I always said, ‘I’m gonna find one of those someday,’ and here it is.”
Carlson’s Pontiac wagon was originally purchased by a man named Henry Gaisman on July 15, 1953, from McAndrew-Jernigan Pontiac in Tuckahoe, N.Y., for a grand total of $3,692.06, including $818.45 worth of options and accessories. Gaisman was a bit of an eccentric inventor, businessman and philanthropist who, among other things, invented the safety razor and accumulated a fortune working for Gillette Safety Razor Co. He also patented an autographic camera where photographers would write on their negatives — an invention he later sold to Eastman Kodak. In his later years, Gaisman gave millions to charity before eventually passing away in 1974 at age 101.
Gaisman probably could have afforded any car around, but he took a liking to the Chieftain wagon, and he bought one loaded up with power steering, Hydra-Matic automatic transmission, whitewall tires, heater/defroster, Chieftain radio, antenna, directional signals, backup lamps, non-glare rearview mirror, latex foam cushions, fender skirts, exhaust deflector, illuminated hood ornament, glove compartment lamp, visor vanity mirror, underhood lamp, outside rearview mirror, hand brake signal, undercoating and General Super Squeegee tires with self-sealing puncture-proof safety tubes.
The car eventually began making the rounds on the auction circuit. Worldwide Auctions sold it twice before Mecum Auctions wound up offering the car for sale at its Indianapolis auction in October 2023. That’s where Carlson picked it up, along with several other cars.
“It was bought in New York, then made its way to Connecticut,” he pointed out. “The gentleman I bought it from had quite an extensive car collection … and I think his family was liquidating his collection, and he was from Arizona. So I know the car has spent time in New York, Connecticut and Arizona. I’ve got a stack about a half-inch thick of all the maintenance records from day one. It’s really well-documented. It’s got everything — power steering … fender skirts … automatic … inline eight … whoever picked options on this car went over the top! The original build sheet has power steering, which is an option that most people didn’t go with, and I’m glad they did. It’s an automatic on the tree, so it was well optioned.”
1953 Pontiacs: ‘Streaking’ ahead
“Pontiac for 1953 is so strikingly new and offers such obvious quality in every detail that it has raised the standards of an entire price class of automobiles,” said an advertisement depicting the new year’s new convertible and station wagon. “Certainly no car anywhere near Pontiac’s price offers style to match this sparkling ‘Dual-streak’ beauty.”
By Pontiac’s conservative standards, the 1953 models were “new from bumper to bumper.” The biggest changes included one-piece windshields; wraparound rear windows, new hood ornaments, ignition-key starting and stepped-up rear fenders. More massive chrome headlamp bezels were used on all models and the new grille encircled the parking lamps up front, and the “Panorama-View” instrument panel attracted many appreciative looks, and still does today.
Rod Carlson’s 1953 Pontiac Chieftain Deluxe station wagon — aka the “tin woodie” — has just 51,000 miles on the odometer and hails from a unique time in station wagon history. Car builders were no longer building vehicle bodies out of wood, but you could still get one that looked the part! This wonderful example was ordered with Spruce Green paint, the same color it wears today. Photo: Brian Earnest Brian Earnest
The wheelbase of all Pontiacs increased to 122 inches and overall length of passenger cars grew slightly to 202 11/16 in. Station wagons, at 205.3 inches, actually shrunk a tad. New “Tru-Arc” safety steering and a “Curve Control” front suspension system were heavily promoted in 1953. Standard 1953 Pontiacs were called Specials. Small hubcaps, rubber gravel guards, straight upper belt line trim and short, arrow-shaped side trim were all part of the new look. Deluxe Chieftains had long “dual streak” body moldings, stainless steel gravel guards with rear fender extensions, dipping belt moldings and chrome full wheel discs. Eights had an “8” emblem between the twin Silver Streaks on the rear deck lid.
Major automakers had ditched true wood wagon construction several years earlier. For 1949, buyers could get a Pontiac wagon that still had some wooden pieces, but by 1950, the wagons were all steel with faux wood paint around the windows and covering the tailgate — hence the “tin woodie” moniker.
The Deluxe Station Wagon was the most expensive car in the lineup at $2,664 — $74 than the six-cylinder version. It weighed $3,716 lbs. Eight-cylinder wagons and convertibles actually dropped in price. The eight-cylinder engine, which Pontiac had planned to replace with the V-8, was unchanged in spec with eight manual or automatic transmissions. A Chevrolet PowerGlide two-speed automatic replaced the Hydra-Matic in some 1953 Pontiac Chieftain models built at the Pontiac, Mich., factory after a devastating Aug. 12 fire at the Hydra-Matic transmission plan in Livonia, Mich. Production of the 1953 lineup started on Nov. 18, 1952, and cars appeared in showrooms on Dec. 6. Model-year output came to 418,619 cars, keeping Pontiac fifth in the U.S. automaker arms race.
‘Drawn to the ’50s’
The odometer on Carlson’s tin woodie shows 51,000 miles and change, and he leans toward believing that figure, based on the condition of the car.
“The motor looks like it’s been repainted, but I can’t say for sure [if it’s been worked on],” he says. “I like the fact that pretty much everything in this car is original. I was told that it had one repaint about 20 years ago, and the fact that it’s in such original condition, that’s what really trips my trigger.
“I had to do a couple little things mechanically — brake lines and a tune-up, and a couple little things like that. I’ve had a chance to crawl under the car and look it over pretty well, and as far as I can tell it looks pretty original to me. The undercarriage has got some signs of age, but no scaling or anything. It’s definitely very original. I’ve had the brake light switch replaced. It had a tune-up and an oil change, but it was pretty much a solid car, good to go.”
The Spruce Green ’53 fits right in with a bunch of other similar machines in Carlson’s fleet. He also has Pontiacs from ’48, ’52 and ’53, and they are all green.
“My grandfather, his name was Terry Ness, had a dealership in Edgar [Wis.] and then moved to Tomahawk [Wis.]. I kind of grew up there in the ’80s, grew up around a dealership,” Carlson says. “I’ve always had my eye on a woodie or a tin woodie, and it had to be a Pontiac. I’m a Pontiac fan and that’s my No. 1 brand. I love the woodies, but on the [real] woodies, the wooden doors never close right, and the wood bows and bends and deteriorates. And I’m not a carpenter, so I was just focusing on something with metal doors — the tin woodies in particular. I actually flew to Atlanta to look at one at prior, and it just didn’t land … And then this one turned up at auction a year ago and I knew it was coming home with me!”
Carlson has dozens of cars that need exercise, but he admits he’s driven the tin woodie more than most of them the past year. It’s a car that he just feels at home in, and it’s just imperfect enough that he doesn’t worry about putting a few more rounds on the clock or getting it a little dirty.
“It gets 16 mpg — you can’t beat that!” he laughs. “I dunno, I’m just drawn to the ’50s. The beginning of the ’50s, the evolution of the fins. I always appreciated how they would go through all the effort to make the tool and die to make a body style, and then scrap it out the next year and do another one!”
Of course, when he shows up in a big, green wagon from the ’50s with some unusual wood trim around the windows, plenty of people who see it for the first time have puzzled looks and questions. It’s not hard to tell it’s a Pontiac, but tin woodies of this ear just don’t show up very often at car shows.
“The majority of people you meet have never seen one. I like the fact that it’s rare and it’s fun to be part of this car’s journey and be the next person to maintain it and keep it original and drive it,” Carlson says. “That’s the thing, a lot of these cars sit in museums for 20 years and nobody drives them. Cars are not meant to sit, they are meant to drive. This year I took it all over the state for shows … It’s a lot of fun. I think I was at a car show nine weekends in a row with this car! I’m just going to love it and enjoy it. It’s not perfect, but it’s not a trailer queen. It’s meant to be enjoyed, and that’s what I’m going to do with it.”
Carlson points to a few flaws in the ’53’s original headliner, and adds, “I appreciate the way it is. To me, it’s done. This is the way I want it. Cars like this, they tell a unique story.”
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